TOUCHING SCENE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20206, 17 January 1934, Page 5

TOUCHING SCENE.

Russian Girl Rejoins Parents. AFTER MANY YEARS. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, January 16. With the arrival of a little browneyed Russian girl at Wellington by the Wanganella to-night, the curtain was rung down on a drama of real life dating back to the fateful days of the Russian Revolution. The little girl, Galina Bogatiroff, had travelled from the Siberian town of Barnau to meet her parents in New Zealand, whom she had not seen since babyhood. She was traced after a search* extending over four years to a remote part of Russia, through the agency of the Red Cross Society. Galina is eleven and a half years of age, and since her parents lost trace of her, some eleven years ago, has lived in various parts of Siberia. She travelled 4000 miles through Siberia to Vladivostok en route to, Japan, and travelled from Japan to Sydney by the Atsuta Marti. She is a sturdy little girl, typically Russian in appearance, and, according to those who travelled on the Wanganella with her, it takes little to cause her to show her snowwhite teeth in a broad and happy smile. Terrible Days. - “ I was only a year old when I was separated from my parents,” she said through an interpreter, “ but my auntie has told me of those terrible days. To save their lives, my mother and father had to escape. I was then only a baby. They were, I am told, faced with a terrible journey of about 400 miles through snow. They suffered hardships and I fell ill. They would have died if they had stayed with me, and I, too, would have died, so they left me to the care of friendly people and again pushed on over the snow, escaping to New Zealand.” When the Wanganella berthed late to-night the largest crowd that ever

greeted an intercolonial vessel gathered on the wharf. Hundreds of people of all grades of society evidenoed the keenest desire to obtain a glimpse of the little Russian girl, whose romantic story, widely published in the newspapers, aroused the keenest interest in and sympathy for her. Affecting Reunion. The reunion of Galina with her parents, which took place in the large music room of the Wanganella, w r as extremely affecting. Parents and child at first conversed together in Russian, but later those who had accompanied the parents on board seized the opportunity to shower warm kisses upon her in welcome to her new homeland. Galina’s first reaction to seeing her parents for the first time in her memory was to cry softly, then in Russian she asked them a question indicative of the bewilderment she must have been feeling during the last few years, “ Do you know any people in Siberia to prove that you are my parents?” But this feeling of doubt, if it really existed at all, was soon dissolved in smiles of joy. The child has a really fascinating smile, and when she was not showing shyness at the presence of the large number of persons who were genuinely delighted to see her, and also when she was not blinking at photographers’ flashlights, this smile often was to be seen.